Saturn, Beyonce, bathtubs and the asteroid Chariklo -- all have rings on it

Astronomers discover first ringed asteroid

NBC News

NBC News

Tamara Dietrich

What do Saturn, Beyonce, bathtubs and an asteroid called Chariklo have in common? They all have rings on it.

In fact, Chariklo is the only asteroid known to have rings — a novelty that surprised astronomers when they discovered it last year.

“We weren’t looking for a ring and didn’t think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery — the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system — came as a complete surprise,” Felipe Braga-Ribas said in an NBCNews.com report. Braga-Ribas is with Brazil’s Observatorio Nacional/MCTI, and lead author of a paper on the phenomenon that appears in the journal Nature.

Chariklo is a small world about 160 miles wide, and the largest of a class of objects known as a “Centaur.” It orbits the sun between Saturn and Uranus.

Astronomers believe the rings are the debris left over from a collision with another celestial object.